Brian Prince

Newly merged Alcatel-Lucent is warning thousands of employees and retirees that personal information such as Social Security numbers, names and addresses may have been exposed after a CD prepared by a vendor was reported missing. The unencrypted disc was crafted by one of the telecommunication companys vendors, Hewitt Associates. It contains names, addresses, Social Security […]

Symantec has fixed a serious vulnerability with an ActiveX control used by Norton Personal Firewall 2004 and Norton Internet Security 2004 that could allow a hacker to execute code remotely on a vulnerable system. According to Symantec officials, the company was notified of the problem by US-CERT. A buffer overflow can be triggered by an […]

Two vulnerabilities open to remote exploitation by hackers have been found in Java Development Kit, one of which could be used to take over a compromised system. JDK (Java Development Kit) is a software development tool made by Sun Microsystems specifically for Java users. The vulnerabilities were rated “critical” by FrSIRT (French Security Incident Response […]

Symantec officials have thrown the first punches in a legal battle against eight companies it has accused of distributing counterfeit Symantec software. The company has filed eight separate civil lawsuits, seeking a combined total of more than $55 million in damages, in U.S. District Court in California during the past several months. Among those named […]

SAP AG and Microsoft Corp. are extending their longtime partnership to win over customers in a bid to reduce the risk and cost associated with migrating to SAPs Enterprise Resource Planning software on SQL Server 2005 from rival products. The companies are establishing a joint lab in Walldorf, Germany, to generate, test and publish migration […]

To hear the staff of Acton, Mass.-based Lumigent Technologies tell it, its the database auditing equivalent of a triple play—support for all three common ways of collecting data in a single, unified platform. With Audit DB 6.0, the latest version of the companys flagship product, users can mix and match the methods used to collect […]

The makers of Samba have patched a serious flaw in their open-source software that could be exploited remotely by hackers to inject code with nobody user privileges. Samba is a suite of software for Unix and Linux operating systems that allows Windows clients to print files using a Linux or Unix machine. The bug, as […]

Symantec has upgraded its Control Compliance Suite with the addition of new features to automate the assessment of procedural controls and gather and translate permissions for data access across the entire enterprise. Scheduled to be available this month, Symantec Control Compliance Suite 8.5 combines policy management with technical and procedural control assessment, said Indy Chakrabarti, […]

Mothers Day is bringing an unwanted gift—spam. According to researchers at security vendor Sophos, spammers have been trying to sell items like flowers, chocolates and baskets of fruit to consumers who may have not yet purchased presents for their mothers. “The United States is celebrating Mothers Day on Sunday, and spammers have ramped up their […]

Microsoft officials say plans are on the way for a weapon that can help protect Office 2003 from attacks, though users of even older versions of Office may find themselves left out in the cold. The company is developing a tool called MOICE (Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment), which converts files from Office 2003 to […]

Microsoft officials are planning to give attendees of its Business Intelligence Conference a birds eye view into the next generation of SQL Server. Code-named “Katmai,” the upcoming version of SQL Server is slated for release in 2008. Microsoft veteran Ted Kummert is expected to go into more detail about the product in his keynote address […]

GridApp Systems has plans for an automated managed service that builds and delivers customized patching workflow bundles to cut the cost and time involved in patch deployment for databases. The service, which supports Oracle and MS SQL Server, will be generally available in June for an annual subscription fee. Dubbed Patchworks, the service is aimed […]